Firefighting costs draining money for forest programs

Updated 4:47 pm, Wednesday, August 6, 2014

A wildfire sweeps eastward, threatening homes in Rowena, Ore., among many fires in the Western U.S.

A wildfire sweeps eastward, threatening homes in Rowena, Ore., among many fires in the Western U.S.

Photo: Mark B. Gibson, Associated Press

Firefighting costs draining money for forest programs

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Washington -- As thousands of acres burn in Northern California, the federal government is scavenging money to fight fires from programs intended to prevent them, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday.

That's because Congress routinely fails to set aside emergency money for big wildfires as it does for other natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, Vilsack said in an interview. Bipartisan attempts to change that have fallen victim to routine partisan gridlock as well as resistance from House Republicans who oppose increasing spending on domestic programs.

The result is that fires are growing bigger and more expensive because the U.S. Forest Service, an arm of the Agriculture Department, is unable to spend enough money on preventing the destruction in the first place, Vilsack said.

The problem is most severe in California and other wildfire-prone states in the West that have large amounts of land under Forest Service management. The federal government manages more than half the land in the West as a whole and 47.7 percent in California.

Prevention efforts

"We know that with additional resources we could go into those communities to better prepare them for fire," Vilsack said. That includes putting distance between forests and houses, and advising homeowners on "how to construct a deck (and) what roofing materials to use to reduce the risk of your home burning up," he said.

"We know from previous firefighting experience ... that when you do those prevention measures, the fire stops," Vilsack said. "It literally protects the home."

The Forest Service expects to spend about $1.8 billion this year to fight fires, more than $400 million over its budget. The agency is taking that $400 million from sources intended to pay for removing hazardous fuels or educating homeowners about fire-resistant construction.

Congress always restores the money the next year, but the temporary hole means the government can't thin flammable landscapes or help homeowners at the height of fire season because those budgets have been pilfered to pay for firefighting.

The firefighting costs also consume money intended for trail repairs, land acquisition, ecological restoration and other projects in the national forests.

Last year, the Forest Service raided money meant for land purchases in the Mendocino, Tahoe and Los Padres national forests. The year before, firefighting costs meant there was less money for repair work on the Pacific Crest Trail and other major hiking routes, restoration of an abandoned mine site in the Tahoe National Forest, and other projects including roadwork, invasive-weed control, bat monitoring and wildlife habitat rehabilitation.

Climate change has made the fire season more than two months longer than it was three decades ago, the USDA says, while rural housing sprawl increasingly puts homeowners in or near forest lands, raising the cost of fighting fires and the cost of destruction.

The Agriculture Department says about 70,000 communities and 45 million homes are in or around forested areas. The cost of wildfire suppression has grown from 13 percent of the Forest Service's budget 10 years ago to more than 40 percent in 2014.

Drought's effects

California's severe drought has raised the risk of fires. Although much of the West is now free of fire, there are large blazes burning in Northern California near Lassen National Park and the Trinity Alps area near Mount Shasta.

Longer fire season

"Normally the fire season is supposed to end sometime in August or early September," Vilsack said. "But you're going to see the fire season extended in California probably into October, November, which means that we're continuing to incur costs and expense.

"That's just going to continue to get longer and longer and longer until we can progressively deal with the hazardous fuel buildup that exists in your forests and forests throughout the Western United States," Vilsack said.

The pine bark beetle has devastated as much as 45 million acres of Western forest, including 15 million acres of Forest Service land. The beetle used to be killed by hard winter freezes, but now survives in warmer winters.

"There's no question we're seeing warming temperatures and no question that has an impact on forests and on agricultural lands," Vilsack said. "The pine bark beetle is a good example of that."

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